The Normans spoke a dialect of Old French, and the comingling of Norman French and Old English resulted in Middle English, a language that reflects aspects of both Germanic and Romance languages and evolved into the English we speak today (where nearly 60% of the words are loanworded from Latin & romance languages like ...
It has evolved through the centuries and adopted many thousands of words through overseas exploration, international trade, and the building of an empire. It has progressed from very humble beginnings as a dialect of Germanic settlers in the 5th century, to a global language in the 21st century.
Some of the main influences on the evolution of languages include: the movement of people across countries and continents, for example, migration and, in previous centuries, colonization. For example, English speakers today would probably be comfortable using the Spanish word 'loco' to describe someone who is 'crazy'.
The first and most important reason for the spread of English is the British Empire. Before nearly a quarter of the world was colonized by the British Empire, English was spoken only by the British. But when they started to trade, colonize with places like Asia and Africa, they naturally started the spread of English.
The world after the first two world wars was a vulnerable and changing one. American businesses were booming and started doing trade all over the world, much like Great Britain had done in the previous century. This bolstered the use of English as the language of global trade.
English was introduced into Australia on British settlement in 1788 and in the following decades gradually overtook Indigenous languages to become the majority language of Australia. Although English is not the official language of Australia in law, it is the de facto official and national language.
The Bottom Line
Middle English emerged after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and it was spoken until the late 15th century. Modern English began to develop in the 16th century, and it has continued to evolve since then.
This is because English is the world's lingua franca or common second language, as this table shows. English is the international language of business, commerce, science, medicine, and many other key areas. Even in diplomacy, where French once ruled supreme, English is now dominant in most regions of the world.
First, it changes because the needs of its speakers change. New technologies, new products, and new experiences require new words to refer to them clearly and efficiently. Consider texting: originally it was called text messaging, because it allowed one person to send another text rather than voice messages by phone.
Having emerged from the dialects and vocabulary of Germanic peoples—Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who settled in Britain in the 5th century CE, English today is a constantly changing language that has been influenced by a plethora of different cultures and languages, such as Latin, French, Dutch, and Afrikaans.
Old English – the earliest form of the English language – was spoken and written in Anglo-Saxon Britain from c. 450 CE until c. 1150 (thus it continued to be used for some decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066).
Henry IV, after 1399, was perhaps the first king of England for whom English was the language of choice. Even so, by royal command from 1362, all pleas in the law courts – and from 1363, the majority of discussions in the parliamentary Commons – had to be conducted in English.
Movement of people
As we noted in at the start of this article, movement of people is the most obvious driver of change to the English language.
Development. Modern English evolved from Early Modern English which was used from the beginning of the Tudor period until the Interregnum and Restoration in England. By the late 18th century, the British Empire had facilitated the spread of Modern English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance.
The English language grows and continuously adapts, evolving as we come up with better words that reflect our society or culture. Advancements in technology have enabled people to advance from quill to ink to pencil, from papyrus to vellum to paper, and from a typewriter to a word processor to a networked computer.
By the late 18th century, the British Empire had spread English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance. Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, art, and formal education all contributed to English becoming the first truly global language.
Why English has become the world's lingua franca is due to the fact that is the common language or mode of communication that enables people to understand one another regardless of their cultural and ethnical backgrounds. It makes communication a lot easier and understanding one another has become efficient.
The closest language to English is one called Frisian, which is a Germanic language spoken by a small population of about 480,000 people. There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects and was brought to Britain by Germanic invaders (8th and 9th centuries AD). One second invasion took place by the Normans of the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and developed an English form of this.
The English largely descend from two main historical population groups: the West Germanic tribes, including the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians who settled in Southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Romans, and the partially Romanised Celtic Britons who already lived there.
The earliest Australian English was spoken by the first generation of native-born colonists in the Colony of New South Wales from the end of the 18th century.
According to Richards, the beginning of our Australian accent emerged following the arrival of European settlers in 1788. "It emerged from a process called levelling down because you had all these people who came here on 11 ships from different dialect areas, regional dialect areas across England," he said.
Australian English can be described as a new dialect that developed as a result of contact between people who spoke different, mutually intelligible, varieties of English. The very early form of Australian English would have been first spoken by the children of the colonists born into the early colony in Sydney.